A long year of election litigation challenged all but the results, standing in stark contrast to 2022 and illustrating a shift toward tooling with election administration as opposed to lawsuits brought in individual races. 

Many of the legal challenges filed in 2024 stand to bleed into the coming year, too, with potential appeals and a new Elections Procedures Manual in 2026 leaving more legal questions on the table for the next election cycle. 

“The litigation in the election space has been increasing, year after year after year. I don’t see that changing in 2025,” election attorney Andrew Gould said. “But what’s interesting is the litigation will take place in 2025. In other words, I don’t know if there’s a down cycle for this anymore.” 

The year started with legal challenges to the 2022 election still sustaining a pulse and promises of litigation against the 2023 Elections Procedure Manual impending and eventually materializing from the Legislature, the RNC and the Arizona Republican Party and the Arizona Free Enterprise Club. 

In the lead up to the election, low and high courts also fielded lawsuits challenging petitions, initiatives set to head to the ballot, summaries of the initiatives and management of voter registration databases. 

But absent from the post-election period was a swell of election litigation challenging results. 

“This year, the margins just weren’t close,” Gould said. “So the more we get into a mindset of, we want to win by more mandate, bigger margins, I think you’ll see election challenges fade away. But I think if we are in a mindset that all I need is 50 plus one, then we’re always going to have election challenges.” 

Gould said the cycle brought more lawsuits filed in advance of the election and “more and more litigation directed toward the structure of administration of elections versus individual candidates and challenges,” a trend he said he expected to continue into the next year. 

“Candidates and people that want to get an initiative on the ballot need to know what the rules of the game are efficiently in advance so they can participate in the Democratic process,” Gould said. 

Challenges to the Elections Procedure Manual are set to continue into the next calendar year as the  Secretary of State’s Office is tasked with drafting a new manual in 2025, with a draft due to Attorney General Kris Mayes and Gov. Katie Hobbs by Oct. 1. 

Most recently, a Superior Court judge ruled on the Legislature’s challenge to the procedures manual. The court voided provisions allowing for voters to be made inactive, as opposed to having their voter registration cancelled if they affirm they are a non-resident of their county in a juror questionnaire. The ruling also allows for leniency for errors in petition circulators registration and requiring counties to canvass the election or see their votes omitted from the statewide canvass. 

In September, both a federal judge and a Court of Appeals judge blocked provisions of the manual enumerating and expanding upon behaviors considered voter harassment and a provision allowing the Secretary of State to certify the statewide election without counties that failed to do so. 

Still pending are questions on recorders and the state’s responsibilities on managing and voiding ineligible voters from voter rolls. 

Gould predicted further challenges to election administration will come earlier and earlier, noting past dismissals of cases based on the Purcell doctrine – case law barring changes on the eve of an election, or laches – a doctrine requiring the dismissal of a case filed too late in the game. 

“People have seen that and thought, I want to avoid those issues and file earlier, so that those defenses aren’t raised and the point is well taken,” Gould said.